An Elegant Solution for Storing Breast Milk

My wife and I have found that storing breast milk in one-cup canning jars, and using a plastic lid for pouring, works well for us.

It’s great if babies can be exclusively breast fed from birth. But, for many of us parents, that just doesn’t work out, so we turn to pumping and, with that, breast milk storage.

My wife and my baby was born prematurely, so he started off with a bottle in the NICU, first with donated breast milk, then with my wife’s milk. He has never exclusively breast fed. Now that my wife is back to work, she pumps there and I bottle feed throughout the day.

As far as I can tell, Madela sets the standard in breast pumps, and our older model (donated by a friend) works great. (Contrary to advice from hospital staff, we found that the “hospital grade” pump isn’t actually much of an improvement; if anything, we prefer the home model.) But what about storage of all that pumped milk?

After some trial and error (including a late-night spilled cup of milk), we hit on a solution that works for us. It might work for you, too. (It is up to you to properly clean and sterilize whatever equipment you end up using and to check with qualified health professionals about all such matters.)

We tried bags, which are basically glorified ziplocks at a shockingly higher price. I didn’t like trying to pour milk out of those floppy things.

So we started storing milk in standard one-cup canning jars. But how do you get the milk out of the jar into the bottle? It’s too messy to try to pour straight out of the jar. At first we used syringes, but after a while those tend to stick. So we bought an eight-dollar plastic cap via Amazon, one that claims to be “FDA approved-Food Safe, BPA-free & Phthalates-free.” I don’t know what Phthalates are, but apparently I can rest assured they won’t end up in baby’s bottle.

This cap works great for us. It seals well on the jar, it has a tight cap on a hinge, and it pours the milk very well with no spillage.

Incidentally, we’ve found that one-cup canning jars with standard lids also work great to freeze extra milk—just be sure not to fill them too full so as to allow for ice expansion.

Sometimes with parenting, we’re finding, simple, inexpensive solutions can work wonders. We’ve found that to be the case with our capped jar approach to milk storage.